Category: Childhood memories

Yellow suitcase

On By Indu PatikkalIn Childhood memories, father, growing up, Happiness, holiday, life lessons, Random thoughts, travelLeave a comment

The big suitcases have come out of hiding. Opening them and laying them out on the floor is when the excitement begins. Before this specific act, there are people asking me, are you excited? I say a half hearted yes, to not disappoint the excitement in their voice. But, it really kicks in when the packing starts. Counting the number of days equal to the number of dresses/clothes I need. Add two for buffer. Pick out the dresses/clothes and stack them neatly. Then I see a bunch of them need to be ironed. I diligently iron them. Then the night clothes and essentials. Again equal to the number of days and two for buffer. Once the clothes are decided, then come out the pouches from hiding. Each pouch will serve a purpose. Medicines, makeup, jewelry, daily needs. Then there is the matter of footwear. I start planning footwear way before I pick my clothes. One footwear that makes sense and will go with all my clothes. A simple, comfortable pair of shoes. Somewhere after the footwear and before the clothes, comes my checklist on my phone. Randomly watching TV is when I start building the checklist. Once everything is laid out on the bed, a day or two before the departure date, all these carefully handpicked items move from my bed to the suitcase. Then it is a countdown feeling. Two days from now we will be at this place, doing this or eating this. That is when the excitement kicks in slowly.

The checklist is checked top to bottom and bottom to top, just to be sure. Everything in order, and we get to the airport. Once there, every aspect of mundane life recedes to the background. It is excitement and anticipation of the time, the boys and I will get to spend together 24×7, exploring, joking, laughing, discussing, wow-ing and taking in all the sights the place has to offer.

I guess this euphoric feeling of seeing the big suitcase coming out is something that has grown with me since I was very young. My family owned a yellow VIP suitcase. It was a hardcase, the top came down and there were metal snaps, that you pressed to shut them close. This is before suitcases had zips. What the current generation would call ‘Retro’. There were number locks, I dont remember if this particular one had a number lock. The inside covering was a golden yellow machine embroidered cloth, I think. Maybe my love for yellow started then. That suitcase coming down from the seven foot almirah meant we were going from Bangalore to Kerala for vacation. Lack of time and money stopped my family from taking vacations to new places every year. Those did happen once or twice, but vacation meant boarding the Bangalore-Kanyakumari Express from Bangalore Central Reservation on Sleeper Class tickets to Shoranur Junction. We got off there and took a bus with this yellow suitcase to my grandmother’s place. After a few weeks there, the suitcase went with us to Kannur, to my paternal grandparents place, filled with more uncles, one aunt and a handful cousins. A ‘fewer’ weeks there and then the suitcase boarded an overnight bus to Bangalore. Somewhere towards the end of maternal grandmother’s house and before the paternal grandparents house, my father joined us. My father preserved a lot of things. The original magazine covers from the 1970’s where my mother’s picture appeared on the cover. In the pile of junk I cleaned out, I found my 9th grade report card. My boys saw my marks in general knowledge and added it as a weapon in their quiver (smh). One thing I did not find, is the yellow suitcase. When I was small, the yellow suitcase seemed big. I guess now that I am big, it wont be bigger than a carry on. I dont know, I never will.

There are things in our life, objects that remain memories. We don’t have pictures that our eyes can see, but stark images in our mind, stored forever. Like the blue metal folding chairs in my house, which I don’t know how many times I must have opened and folded. The gas stove that my father bought, many many years ago, that didn’t need a lighter, the knob had ignition built in, This one I don’t have to imagine, because my father still used it until his last day. It was waiting for him in the kitchen when I went to clear out the house earlier this year. There are so many objects that we use everyday, but they slip away with time.

If there was only thing I could do in my life, that would be to travel, to every nook and corner of the world. I believe there is so much to see, so much to experience. So this time, the suitcases are out, getting filled slowly, as we jet set to the UK, checking off a place that has been on the boys and my bucket list for many many years now. The excitement, like the bubbles in a glass of champagne making their way to the surface. The suitcase is not significant looking. A dark teal colored companion I bought earlier this year to accompany me on my journey of the world. Let’s see how many places she and I will see together.

Little red seeds

On By Indu PatikkalIn Blessing, Childhood memories, depression, father, Friends, Happiness, holiday, life, life lessons, love, manjadikuru, Random thoughts, realizations, travel2 Comments

I got back from India about three weeks ago. I was there for twelve days. I traveled to five cities. I met so many people. People from as young as eight months to people in their eighties. These are people with whom my paths have crossed at some point in my life. People I have not seen in twenty two years, twenty years, eight years, six years. I smiled, I laughed, I cried, most importantly I felt loved, every moment I was there. These are my people, they have all played a part in where I am today.

It is common knowledge that when an Indian born living outside India, goes back to where they reside, depression sets in for a few weeks. I had heard of this, but this is the first time I experienced it. I went into depression, the real stuff, where I don’t have an appetite, I am sad, but not really sure why, I don’t have the drive to do anything. All I want to do is lay somewhere and look at something mindlessly. I tried to wake up from this slumber, but I just couldn’t shake it off. During this time Grey’s Anatomy came to my rescue. 18 seasons on Netflix, that’s what you call a treat. I was glued. Three days of winter storm, at the end of it, by lower back started hurting, because I was on the couch for hours, escaping my depression.

This morning when I woke up, I decided that I will not watch another episode, until I empty out the suitcase I brought back from India. It has been lying in my living room, open, with undergarments, unused sanitary pads exposed. I simply did not bother. I walked by that suitcase everyday, many times a day, yet it was like this thing, that if I went close to, would burst some bubble and I would gasp for air. Today, as I was talking to my mental health clock (she keeps me in check, almost everyday), I picked up some hangars from my closet and started pulling out the dresses one by one. Each one had a memory. I remembered when I wore them, with whom I was, the happiness I felt. It was draining. I found the photographs, that I had taken out of an album I found in my father’s house. The ones that didn’t have any meaning, my friend held on to those, the rest I found, today. I got that old plastic bag with the heap of one, two rupee notes, that I found in my father’s steel almirah, of forty something years. That almirah is like a person who lived with us, since when I remember. I finally ransacked his secret compartment while looking for property documents. He never let us open that compartment, because his valuables were stored there, lenses, cameras, his salary. I found so many old lens filters and gave them away to his friend. A very long time ago, when he came back from one of his official trips, he’d brought me a purple glitter pencil, where you remove the used lead and push it back at the top of the pencil, so a new lead emerges out at the writing tip. He never gave it to me. I found that pencil and took it. I found old coins, 1 paise, 2 paise, 3 paise, collector’s stuff…

As I took them out one by one from the suitcase, I found the kolhapuri sandals, that my friend and I bought on Commercial street, bargaining, a skill neither she nor I like or know anything about. We went into those shops, looking for oxidized jewelry, I found those as well. One by one, they all came out. Lying around the suitcase in hangars, piles, organized by where they will go, in my closet. At the bottom was a red Tommy Hilfiger pouch I received as a gift eighteen years ago. When my kiddo was one, when life was simple, when everything was happy. I opened the pouch and found those old coins, the oxidized jewelry, the fancy stuff I took from here, but never wore, and among them scattered were the little red seeds I had packed in a tissue.

My besties and I went to a resort for a day. A day where it was just three of us in some tiny corner of the world, talking about everything and anything. As we walked on the grounds of that resort, we saw a little red seed on the ground. I got excited. My friend looked up and said it was a tree of the little red seeds. She and I picked the seeds, one by one, like little children. She gave me a handful which I tuck away in my pocket.

It wasn’t the clothes that I was pulling out of that suitcase, it was the memories. The friend and her family who opened her house and her arms to me, my father’s friends from even before I was born, who made me feel that he lives on in our thoughts, the eight month infant, who looked at me with her big round eyes, like she knew me from another life, the aunt, who couldn’t say a word, but in the end, took my hand and kissed it, my little buddy whom I taught ‘see you later alligator, in a while crocodile’, my friend who tears up every time she seems me or lets me go an epitome of what affection is, the family, the love, the happiness, the warmth. I was pulling out each one of this from the suitcase.

As I always say, depression is real, depression is hard. There is no way around it, but through it. As my therapist says, one foot in front of the other, baby steps. The light will seep in through the crevices. It always has, it always will.

Family

On By Indu PatikkalIn Blessing, celebrate, Childhood memories, growing up, Happiness, life lessons, parenting, Random thoughts, realizationsLeave a comment

We are taught, right from the day we have some understanding of our surroundings, that family is your parents and your siblings. Then you have an extended family which is your aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins. For many years I believed this. Family to me was always father, mother, children. It was an etched-in-stone kind of definition.

The world as we know it as moved away from this definition. There are many women who choose to be single mothers, there are many men who choose to be single fathers. Then there is the gay community, where family is either father, father and children or mother, mother and children. Families now come in all shapes and sizes. Not every family fits into the age-old definition of father, mother and children.

I grew up in a middle class nuclear family. Aunts, Uncles, cousins, grandparents were people we interacted with during the summer vacation. My core was my father, mother, brother and paternal uncle who lived with us. This was my space in the universe. In this space, I was allowed to feel, I was allowed to talk, I was allowed to be me. If I said something out of disrespect, I was corrected. If I said something out of anger, I was given the space to calm down. If I did something wrong, I was told why it was wrong and I was given the opportunity to apologize. My family had a lot of friends and we called them family friends. These were people who lent a hand financially when my parents were struggling to pay my school fees or were short handed at the end of the month. They were there with us emotionally, by encouraging us to push a little higher and have some success in the print world. We participated whole heartedly in each others family events, marriages, death, birth, etc. I have seen more of my parents friends come to our house, have a meal of simple chapathi and curry or whatever was there, than my aunts and uncles.

My concept of family developed through these people. They were family to me, not just family friends, because they were there for us. They didn’t tell my parents that they were trying to do something impossible by trying to set up a print shop. They didn’t judge my parents and say why are you sending your children to the best and most expensive school when you know you cannot afford it. They didn’t comment on the clothes we wore, or the humble living quarters. They sat cross legged on the floor and ate what my mother served. Without asking they brought money and handed it over to my parents. I owe these people a lot and remember them fondly. Many of them have passed, but they were placed in our lives for a reason.

I am a movie buff. A few movies have left a lasting impact on me. One such movie is English Vinglish. After learning English, at the end of the movie, the protagonist defines what a family is, and those words have stuck with me. She says, ‘a family is not judgmental’. That’s precisely how I was raised. My family and everyone around my family, our support systems, never judged us. So that is my definition of a family. A group of people who do not judge you and with whom you can be you.

As I go through my divorce, I have been re-drafting my age-old family definition of father, mother, children. Now my family is mother and children. And that is okay, because for single moms, mom and children is family. My son recently asked me what is family. I told him from my experience this is what I have learnt – a group of people who don’t judge you and let you be you. He said, you took the words out of my mouth. I am glad, rather proud, that my child is not stuck to age old family definitions. That he understands, family is not judgmental.

Dont fix them..

On By Indu PatikkalIn Blessing, celebrate, Childhood memories, Children, growing up, life, life lessons, opinion, parenting, Random thoughts, realizationsLeave a comment

Parenting a teenager has been and still is the my most challenging yet rewarding experience of these sixteen years of being a mom. This time I am taking baby steps, almost like I am the baby and he is the parent. By the time my second one becomes a teenager, I will probably be sitting up. As I’ve said like many others, there is no golden book. You fall, you get up, again stumble, again rise, you get the idea. There is some method to the madness, but each child is different. The most important lesson being, don’t try to fix them.

As parents we think our primary responsibility is to make them the best, in academics, in behavior, in manners, in their career, their family. In this process we take the leader role and the child is the follower. This is the primary mistake. They lead and we follow. The simple logic being, they are teaching you to be the parent, so let them lead. Of course, few essential things need to be taught by example, but by and large they show you the way. This trying-to-fix syndrome does not work with a teenager. Their mindset is that they are almost adults, as much as we are, so they don’t need any fixing. The more you try, the more they get away from you, emotionally and sooner than later, physically.

So as they start thinking that they are almost adults, you need to treat them like one. Make it real. Tell them one thing about your day, everyday. Don’t bring the work home, but bring the people you work with, home. It’s not about you dressing up and leaving in the car and getting back in the evening. There is more to it, and open those doors to them. They want a taste of the real world, this is when they want to race to their twenties, missing the fact that pre-twenties are the best years.

Remember, what your pre-twenties looked like? No phone, if you didn’t live on the same street, you didn’t see your friend till the next day at school. We live in an age and time that by the time they are 15, they have a phone. They are constantly texting their friends, looking up anything on the internet. Their pressure is greater and I know that fomo is real. If they don’t check their phones every now and then, they think there will be a hundred messages that they will miss responding to. If they don’t respond, they are left out. Nobody has time to wait for someone to catch up. Everyone is running, running towards what nobody knows..

Phone is not something you take away from a teenager. It is the new stuffed toy they probably carried around when they were a baby to drive away some fear. That small elephant or teddy bear stuffed toy they hugged to sleep and walked around with, which was their security blanket. Well, as shocking as it is, that 6 inch of radiation causing non-sensical gadget is that teddy bear now. When it’s taken away, it’s like they have lost oxygen. And don’t even get me started on, if you look at the phone, yes, just look, not unlock, not actually read anything. It’s an invasion of privacy. I think when we gen-x were in our teens, we wanted to tell our parents almost everything, but now privacy prevails.

With all this mess and nonsense that the internet feeds into their brains, they need an avenue to vent. I don’t think it is even venting, it is a release of unwanted energy. This is where your follower vs leader trait is put to the test. If you are a follower, they will vent to you. If you are the leader, they don’t want to get anywhere close to you. You need to give them the room to vent. They are almost adults, remember, so they get angry, and they need to release the anger. This the the age when every emotion is distinct. They are figuring it out, so follow their lead.

When you follow their lead, you also need to lead by example. You cannot tell them to spend less time on their phones while you are glued to your phone. You cannot expect them to pick up after them, if you don’t. They will make the bed as much as you do. You don’t realize much when they are young, that they are observing your every move. Well, fast forward ten years and your teenager will show you exactly who you are. This is when you are shocked, feel like you are a miserable parent, like you’ve lost this race, you’ve ruined it, and your first impulse is to fix it, without fixing yourself. A tween will point out hypocrisy before you see it.

A friend of mine posted a beautiful picture of her daughter and said ‘when parenting seems perfect’. The keyword here is ‘seems’. When there is no hypocrisy, when there is no fixing, when you follow, you will get a few moments of when you feel like you’ve won, it ‘seems’ perfect and you give yourself a perfect score. Just then they will flip and wander off to a direction. So you just have to see where they go, take a few steps further and be ready for them. As individuals we grow within ourselves, but as parents we grow in two directions. Individual growth is so different from parental growth. You have to grow as your child grows, gain strength from your individual learnings and be there for them.

And in closing all I have to say is ‘no one got it right’. Everyone aims for perfection, but nobody is. We need to understand that we are not perfect and should not expect it from our children, specially from teenagers. If you have missed the boat on something before they became a teenager, then don’t try to catch the boat and get in, its sailed away. In time, your fella will catch it.

In the middle of nowhere..

On By Indu PatikkalIn Childhood memories, Children, growing up, Happiness, Illusions of a dream, learning the hard way, life, life lessons, mother, opinion, parenting, Random thoughts, realizations, Tranquility, WomanLeave a comment

Fifteen years ago I start this journey of extreme excitement, where I stepped into the unknown. Nothing could have prepared me for this, not ‘what to expect when you’re expecting’ or any other bible on parenting. I happily receive what my husband gives me, pray for it to plant inside me, and when magically the two parallel lines appear, I am on top of the world, or so I think. Every day after that was a wait for that magic door to open, for me to attain the ultimate purpose of being a woman (really? was I that stupid that I literally thought that the purpose of being born a woman was to bear a child). Anyways, I regale at the tummy grow, jump at every kick, announcing to the whole world, that this tiny being inside me decided to move in the cramped space and in the process pressed against my belly. Everything you can imagine about pregnancy and labour I embraced with open arms and rolled out the red carpet, throwing rose petals all around.

I went through the one, the usual call the whole world, first birthday party. Then the words came, one by one, then sentences, the cute pronunciation and I went oooh and aaah.. the party that has been going on for generations, except that now we have more props. The threes came quickly and I decided I wanted to have another one. So repeat. The reason for this is funny, when I think of it now. My brother was born when I was 5 and I had a friend who has a brother two years older to her. I loved the camaraderie between them, as compared to the little thing in my house who always fought with me for the remote, or chocolate and made sure I got the beating. Those two seemed like two peas of a pod and since that day I had decided (yes, decided at the age of thirteen) that I would have my children two years apart. So I have this second one, happily receive what my husband gave, double purple lines, and all the drama with two.

In a couple of years they started daycare, school, getup in the morning (I HATE IT and there is no two ways about it), pack the lunch, drop, bus, blah blah blah.. Before I realize I am blowing the candles 4 and 0 on my birthday cake. From the one instant of stepping into extreme-excitement zone till I saw 4-0, it has been a loooooooooooong fifteen years. When I think of the future, it seems like it went by so fast, but when I look at the past, Oh my God!! it took so long. It ate up a good fifteen years of my life. Now what? That is the reason for this write up.

As physically straining as it has been, as I look back, it’s been such an emotional and mentally stressful journey. My brother has a wall full of our childhood pictures (yes the same one who fought all the time with me to hold the remote). My fourteen-soon-will-be-fifteen fella tells me the other night, “Amma, you look the same now, from when you were a child…”. He pauses for a moment and continues.. “except that you looked happier then, now you are grumpy all the time…”. WOW!!! I thought… Before I entered this extreme-fun-thrill-ride as they claim it to be, I had to think only about myself. My happiness depended solely on me and the people I wanted to be with. I wanted to see my parents, I’d take the next bus and go home. I wanted to hang out with my friends, I’d plan something and do it. There were no strings attached anywhere. People who know me from that time, will remember me as a carefree person who did what she liked, all the time. So why am I grumpy now, what changed. The belief that my happiness depends solely on me has receded into the background. I have to think for these two two-year-apart fellas and every moment of mine rides on what they are upto or their needs or something about them, before that thought travels to me. I am not a control freak, I pretty much let them do what they want to do, yet, I cannot stop myself from thinking. I know this is the most common motherhood phenomenon that every mother goes through. But I have reached a stage where I want to regain the strength of my happiness from within me.

Some of you may say, this is mid-life crisis, but I don’t think so. This is motherhood crisis and only a mother will go through this. This is probably when she really releases the child from the placenta and regains her womb to herself. Maybe this is when she starts to feel like herself again and think of her and her children at the same level, versus the children on top, she below that she has been used to since they were born.

As I was telling a friend (who is running behind her two year old), the other day, that I would swap places and do the two year old again and again instead of dealing with the teens. The reason being, when the children are in their teens, that is when you start seeing the results of all the years, your sweat, your every emotion since the day you conceived them. I know everyone can’t be perfect, but when you see some basics missing, you think, what the f*** have I been doing? But you didn’t have a textbook either, you did not come into the world with a degree in parenting. Then this whole easily-blameable destiny / karma.. That is his/her karma. So now you see the am-i-to-blame AND may-be-its-not-my-fault jugalbandi playing in my head. Then my son gives me the second gyaan. We were seated at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway to watch ‘Phantom of the Opera’. I had no idea how this place looks and based on some reviews and guesses bought mezzanine seat tickets. When I sat there and looked around, I thought maybe the orchestra seats were better. My fella understood my predicament and said “Amma, stop thinking you failed..” WOW-WOW-WOW!!! Again.

So that’s where I am. In the middle of nowhere. Wanting to be worried about nothing, but absolutely worried about everything. Killing my inner happiness over ‘nothing?” The strangest thing in this world is the mind. Extremely powerful, yet so brilliantly stupid! When it is so simple to keep things simple, it convolutes and plots to make everything complicated, chaining you down, making you feel inadequate, when there is no need to feel that way in the first place.

Still searching… !

The best lesson…

On By Indu PatikkalIn Blessing, celebrate, Childhood memories, death, growing up, life, life lessons, mother, parenting, Random thoughts, realizations, WomanLeave a comment

My mom has taught me a lot of things… like every other mother does. Some she was vocal about and some by example.

1. When her mother was not well, she was there to care for her no matter what. Her selfless love towards her mother was a perfect example of how children should care for their parents in their old age. In this she taught me to be there for your parents.

2. She fought with the institution to ensure my brother got admission to Bishop Cottons. She urged the principal to reduce the admission fee, borrowed money to pay it and ensured my brother was enrolled to the school. He was 6, I was 11. She vocally taught me that it was important to be fair to your children and give them equal opportunities. What they make of it is beyond her control but as a parent it was her responsibility to be fair.

3. Every night we ate together, my father, her, brother, uncle and I. At that time it was just the norm for me. She cooked, I helped, we sat down on the floor, spoke about school or current affairs or anything and ate the meal. Now when I have a family I realize the importance of that simple act. At the end of the day the family comes together and shares their day or thoughts or whatever, but essentially what builds there is a bridge of communication. Everyone talks to everyone in the family.

4. She taught me the value of money. She told me the income and expenses and how to make ends meet. I was 12. I saw her struggle quietly at various things we never had. Money is essential, but not everything. She always said, a path will carve itself out, some door will open and a door always opened.

5. The relationships you make whether blood or not are to be kept. Blood does not make anything thicker. Having people around, you can turn to was the important thing. She respected every person who she came across, whether young or old. It was of utmost importance to treat everyone with respect.

But of all that she taught me the one I value the most is what she taught me silently when she passed, that I have no control over anything except myself. That lesson walked into my life when I most needed it. I cried after she went about the what-if possibilities, when my dad told me, that it was her time to go, and there is no point in any what-ifs.

The only thing I can control is my part of the relationship with another person, my reaction to a situation or to what another person says to me, my thoughts about a situation, my words that I choose to utter, my emotions. Everything else is not mine to claim or change. This simple but powerful truth has changed my life. And she is my teacher.

I love you Ma, Happy Mother’s Day!!